Companies would like to believe that the people who invest in them understand the business they are trying to make a return on and that they believe in it to some degree, but the sad truth is that for every shareholder who understands what they are putting their money into there might be one that doesn't have a clue or doesn't care beyond the financial return or loss.

As Kotaku highlights, one vocal Nintendo investor indicated that he might be out of touch. During the Q&A at Nintendo's annual shareholders meeting one such investor was upset that Nintendo spent so much time talking about video games and that Satoru Iwata was reelected as the President of the company:

"I do not understand video games and I even feel angry because, at Nintendo's shareholders' meetings, the shareholders always discuss things relating to video games or such childish topics as 'what the future of video games should be,' while I, for one, was flabbergasted that Mr. Iwata continues to hold his position although he had said that he would resign if the company's performance were bad."

"I hope that Nintendo's shareholders' meeting will become an opportunity where the shareholders discuss the company's business operations from the viewpoints of capital gain and dividends," the angry shareholder added.

Obviously Nintendo executives fielding these questions are not going to call this guy a moron, so their response to his comments were polite:

Nintendo executive Genyo Takeda told the investor: "I appreciate your tough comment. We, the directors of this company, believe that we should take responsibility by recovering our business's momentum. I would like to ask Mr. Kimishima to comment on this valuable opinion from one of the Nintendo shareholders."

Nintendo's Tatsumi Kimishima offered a similarly polite response, but gently reminded the shareholder what Nintendo does to make money:

"The Annual General Meeting of Shareholders is an important opportunity for communication between Nintendo shareholders and the company's management team. It is a place where we respond to the views expressed by shareholders, in order to discuss how we should develop the company from now on. From that perspective, talking about the company's business operations is very important and, at the same time, as an entertainment company, it is also very important for us to inform our shareholders about the kinds of entertainment Nintendo offers, including video game content. Therefore, as the shareholder has just commented, we are and will continue trying to thoroughly discuss our business operations, and we will continue to respond to questions from other shareholders regarding the kinds of entertainment we are challenging ourselves to offer. We will try to further enhance the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders from now on. We appreciate your continued support of the company.

Once again, we appreciate these valuable comments from the shareholder."

Comments

Reading through some of the questions on Nintendo's site, I am not sure I agree that the investor was all that out of touch.

A shareholder meeting is generally intended to discuss business level issues, in many ways such meetings are nearly identical across various industries since their target audience are non-industry specific investors.

And looking at the Q&A, it really did seem to get unusually into the industry specific discussions with some bordering on fan type questions. Much of it was stuff I would expect at a press conference with journalists and fans rather then a stockholder event. Though much of it of course straddled the two.

But on the whole, it did not read like a discussion between investors and management and I could understand why someone who is purely interested in the company from an investment perspective would get frustrated with how off topic things seemed to have gotten. Think about it, when you go to the bank to discuss your retirement fund or mortgage, even if the banker would find your line of work personally interesting, talking about it is not really on-topic outside how it intersects with earnings.

You really have to wonder how much of that was someone trolling just for lulz and how much was actually an idiot thinking Nintendo had more under its belt than video games however. I mean, you can't be that stupid, can you...?